Childhood's End

It wasn't finding out there was no Father Christmas, or hearing my father use the 'F' word at a long pub urinal when he was talking to my Uncle Les at a family wedding, little realising I was further along in earshot (he's never to my knowledge uttered a single profanity in the family home, despite forty years in the glass factory, where I'm sure it was obligatory...a man of principle).

No. The day my childhood truly died was just a few weeks after the man in question did the same - Jimmy Saville.
To understand the collossal impact of him you have to have grown up in the late 60s/early 70s. He was the wacky presenter of Top Of The Pops, already standing out as a bizarre cigar-toting peroxide bug eyed one-off amongst his bearded Blue Peter presenter-type colleagues.
And then there was 'Jim'll Fix It' -  a TV show where he used his God-like influence to make kids' dreams come true, with a wave of cigar smoke and a winning charm. The most striking thing about him is that he just "was". Other celebrities had achieved fame through some skill or role (though these days, the situation has reversed itself, with deplorable people lunging straight at celebrity status, thinking the rest will fill itself in as they go along), but Jimmy's skill was being Jimmy Saville. A role he excelled at - the millionaire with the common touch, a charmer of young and old, rich and poor, who consorted with royalty, government ministers and celebrities. A psychedelic Mother Theresa who devoted his life to charitable works, at the personal expense of wife and children and the rest, tirelessly jogging the length and breadth of the UK to rase money for sick kids.
When he died I was truly upset, feeling we'd lost a decent altruistic and unique human being.

Everybody knew him, or felt they did. He was a benign mischeivous sprite who could go anywhere and was welcome everywhere, because for him the normal rules didn't apply. He'd "effortlessly" rewritten them, then sat back smoking a big cigar like he owned the planet.
Maybe he'd observed how people in foam-rubber animal suits at theme parks could grab, tickle and do as they pleased, and transformed himself into the human equivalent. A simple trick, but one which gave him an All-Areas Pass to the highest echelons of Society and Power, and once invited in there, they were all guilty by association, for how could they admit they'd willingly welcomed in The Beast?
Fame and Privilege are mere suits to put on, but the truly evil weild a power that transcends the acting and is bone-marrow deep. Like Rasputin, The Mafia and The Krays before him, Saville part charmed and part intimidated his way in. They would now have us believe that like a vulgar gatecrasher at a Society Ball, he was tolerated rather than cause a scene ejecting him.
Princes, Heads of State and Media Moguls didn't have the slightest idea that he was preying on the sick, vulnerable and innocent like a depraved peroxide vampire. Which means they either are woefully unfit for the positions they hold, or that they knew all along and didn't really care, after all it was only us at risk.
Now howzabout that then guys and gals?

1978 - White Dopes on Punk

Compiling a 1978 New Wave radio show recently got me thinking about those days, back when I was fourteen. I was too young for Punk's genesis (how often do you see those two words together?) in 1976 and its explosion in 1977. Oh, I knew about it; it was in the Daily Mirror, but I'm pretty sure I was at a Jubilee street party when the Pistols were commandeering a boat down the Thames playing 'God Save the Queen'. I wouldn't have forgone free butties and pies to show alliegance to a pop record, not at thirteen.
But it was 1978 when I started tuning in - when kids at school were telling you smugly that it was already all over. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? But how could it be all over? Great records were still coming out , though you had to be careful who you declared your love of a Buzzcocks song to. Punk, despite being supposedly all over was an exclusive club; they'd paid the membership subs and the doors were closed. And ironically Punk also belonged to the bully boys and knuckleheads who saw it as a glorification of violence. You couldn't just "like" Punk, you had to "be" a Punk and cover your blazer in safety pins, headbutt a teacher and set fire to the bike sheds.

It was a confusing time. Despite our non-proximity to London, and no-one being remotely old enough, if you hadn't seen the Pistols at The 100 club or The Screen on the Green in '76, you weren't fit to burn. Yet at the same time, comedy punk songs like 'Jilted John' and 'Kill' by Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias were taken at face value and treated with the same reverence as Anarchy in the UK.
Nobody had much of a quality filter, we just wanted Punk and if it was on pink vinyl even better.

Once I was seen as a black-market purchaser from the older lads I was accepted and allowed in, no bondage keks required. And My God! It was exciting! Certain records were elevated to Holy Grail status - New Rose, Spiral Scratch, Anarchy on EMI. I bought 'Damned Damned Damned' from a guy who a year earlier wanted nothing more than to beat me senseless, yet here we were meeting furtively in the corridor, examining the merchandise - Stiff Records, authentic! Money changing hands. I remember physically shaking from that encounter, not from the fear of this underworld dealing but from the sheer excitement generated by the disc I held in my hands.

You could pledge alliegance to the groups you loved with little badges on your blazer lapels, and furious debates raged about which groups were "Punk" or not. Were the Ramones Punk? Then how come they looked like rockers and had (eeek!) long hair? And The Tubes? They had a song about punks but it sounded like Glam Rock. It was a veritable minefield. Then once 1979 kicked in it got really complicated. The Jam, were they suddenly Mod now? The Specials and Two Tone, I like it but that's Mod too and we are genetically predisposed to hate them...no, it's Ska, that's alright. The Human League, Tubeway Army, and where the hell were Devo coming from?
But it was all good and in the end we decided we were just gonna like what we liked, screw the tribal dividing lines that the grebos and gimps clung to desperately, and screw the disdain of the rugger buggers - they were all into Yes and Elton John anyway. Yup, 1978 a mighty fine year!